EskWeston

Goalkeeper Sam Walker has signed for League Two side Bristol Rovers on loan until January 2. The 20-year-old is eligible to play in tonight's Capital One Cup clash against Ipswich Town. Walker joined Chelsea as a schoolboy from Milwall in 2007 and was a key member of our 2010 FA Youth Cup-winning side. In March 2011 he joined Barnet on loan, making his professional debut against Chesterfield and helping the Bees stay in the Football League. That summer he switched to Northampton, before switching to Yeovil Town in January, making 20 appearances before the end of last season. Source: Chelsea FC

Agree with this, we need top four, but i don't expect us to be able to get to our best this season with our new players.

Yup this is exaclty what i want to see too, I think it would bring out the best in what we have in our squad and produce the best results. Chances of us seeing this happen though are very slim, Mikel and Lampard will be the main men in midfield and one of best players over the last 2 years Ramires will be forced out wide or a bit part role.

This game was another poor turnout from us. There are many concerns raised by pre season and i hope we can work them out as quickly as possible because we are going to have a tough start to the season.

For me formations are not the problem, it is the way we are playing. We need to be able to release the ball quicker and see more movement off the ball. If we continue the way we are at the moment we are way to predictable and far to easy to play against. We need quick insisive passing, better pressing and more movment off the ball. The fact we have not seen this at all in pre season so far is a worry. The best football we played was in the first half against Seattle. For me, if we are going to play a midfield 2 in a 4-2-3-1 then we cannot play any pairing of Mikel, Lampard, Essien and Meireles. We lack the drive and pace in the midfield, we need one of those alongside Ramires, Romeu or McEachran (or that type of player). I would love to see a pairing of Romeu and Ramires behind a 3 of Hazard, Oscar and Mata. It is the same in a midfield 3 of a 4-3-3, we just lack the drive in midfield when played with certain players. More than anything i want to see Ramires brought off the wing and put in the midfield where he can do the most damage and be a bigger influence on the game. My biggest concern is that we are going to sacrifice what could be our best "playing" eleven to accomodate certain players.

As the season draws ever nearer we finally get some clarity on what we can expect at Academy level for Chelsea this season. But before we get to that lets cover the match action that took place this week. Last Saturday the U21’s were in match action at Northampton town, in a tough match that was well fought by both sides Chelsea came out on top eventually, Alex Kiwomya coming off the bench to bag a brace. It was a good win for the boys who will look to build on this with 3 remaining friendlies before their season starts. The U18’s were also in friendly action in Malaysia against a Malaysian select 11. After a tough opening game against the Leo all stars they managed to pick up their level and come away with a 4 – 2 win. Walter Figuera weighed in with 2 goals and George Cole and Isak Ssewankambo got a goal apiece. Ade Viveash was pleased with how his U18’s handled themselves on and off the pitch and they can take a lot of positives away with them. They will now return back to England to continue their pre season. The groups and fixtures for the U16’s, U18’s and U21’s have finally been announced and we can see how the new set up will impact the development of young players in England. Much has been made of the impact of the EPPP (Elite Player Performance Plan) and now we can see the fruits of those changes. All 3 age groups will follow the same paths, all clubs who applied for category 1 status have been put into the same level although not all of those have been granted category 1 status. Those clubs have now been split into 3 further groups: National Group One Arsenal, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Everton, Norwich City, Reading, West Bromwich Albion, West Ham United National Group Two Aston Villa, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Southampton, Stoke City, Sunderland, Tottenham Hotspur, Watford National Group Three Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton Wanderers Chelsea will play each team in their group home and away. These fixtures will take us to December and have already been announced and can be seen in the Youth and Reserves section on the forums. So initially there will be 12 games for us to compete in. From that stage the top 3 teams from groups 1 and 2 and the top 2 teams from group 3 will qualify for the “Elite Group” the remaining teams will go into “group tier one” or “group tier two”. We will then play each team in our new group home and away creating another 14 fixtures for us to play. The top 3 teams from the “Elite group” will then move into knockout semi finals to be joined by the winners of a playoff against the winners of development tier one and two. And finally the semi finalist winners will play each other in a final. So there is potentially 28 fixtures for us to play at the 3 academy levels and this is obviously a massive improvement on what we have been seeing particularly at reserve team level. Whilst the number of fixtures played by the teams is of great importance the other aim of the new EPPP was to generate more competition. Now we can see how that is hoped to be accomplished. Chelsea being the type of club that we are will strive to finish in the top 2 of our group to be able to play in the second stage “Elite Group” where will have the best fixtures to test ourselves in the second half of the season. This means that the academy managers will lean far more on winning the game than what they have in the past. That will generate competition in the team because the managers will want to pick the players who will give the best chance of winning, thus creating competition for places which is another stimulant for generating the environment to push young players to better themselves. Another one of the important factors is for teams to play at a stadium and in front of crowds. Chelsea will be playing the majority of their fixtures at Griffin Park and a few games will be played at Stamford Bridge. Despite this seemingly being the “rules” a number of clubs have decided to play their games at their training complexes behind closed doors which goes totally against the spirit of the EPPP. Hopefully in future years this is something that will be enforced more strongly. So there we have it, that is what we have in store at academy level this season and it is an exciting prospect to finally see some real change happening to aid the development of these talented young players. Will the competition be taken as seriously as everyone hopes? Time will tell, but one thing is for sure that it is certainly a big improvement on what we have seen so far. This week the U21’s are once again in friendly action, this time they are at St Albans and will hope to build on what they did last week. The U18’s meanwhile will have a home game against Millwall on Monday before they travel up to Manchester United to play a number of games against Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Man United all of these games will take place this week, so once again it is another busy week in the academy. Click here to view the article

It will be interesting to see how RDM sets up for this game. This game there will be many more players getting 90 mins, Torres will look to get about 60. So we can see what sort of team he is planing, obviously minus the olympics players. As it is Brighton you expect us to be able to play much better than we have in previous pre season games, but for me i am looking to see HOW we play, i would like to see a much better pressing game and quicker on the break.

I have to say it probably seems the right choice, De Bruyne in pre season looked like he needed more time at a higher level than Genk before joining us full time. Hopefully he will get the game time he needs there and improve himself. My only frustration would be letting De Bruyne go and keeping hold of Malouda - i know which one i would prefer to have available. If he gets the games it will be a good move, although i think the premiership may have been better but the club clearly have decided that they are not fond of loans to clubs in England....

I think we can expect to see more unofficial links like this. It has proven to be very worthwhile for us. We will never know the true extent to Romans and Chelsea's influence at this club but it gives us great oppertunities to send our players on loan there as we have done and as we are. Especfially as Vitesse are on the verge of the Europa League (although a tough tie against Hiddinks side).

If you look at one of our teams from 6 years ago, we had a lot of talent: Taylor Ofori-Twumasi Hutchinson Cork Bertrand Bridcutt Woods Fernandes Cummings Stoch Sinclair 2 of those are technically first team players, so on that side you have to say we are doing well. However there are three there who would have been decent squad players for us - Cork, Stoch, Sinclair. It is all about chances and development. The club have to manage the youngsters in the right way, but at the end of the day the first team manager HAS to at some point give them a chance...

What we should be doing is finding the best way to utilise the new talented players we have at our disposal. At the moment we have been unable to do that.

Thats right, Buying players like Oscar, Hazard and Marin are sensible signings for the club. It is when we have situations where Malouda plays ahead of Piazon or we play a player well out of position rather than play a youngster. It all comes down to trust, at Chelsea we seem to have a total fear of playing youngsters, firstly we virtually never give them a chance, and then when we do rather than telling to go out and express themselves they are clearly told to do the simple things and not give the ball away so they never show their true potential out of fear of doing something wrong, we should trust them and allow them to do what they do. Anyone who has seen what Josh McEachran can do on the ball will know that we have not even seem 50% of what he can do in the Chelsea first team.

The overall performances would still be pretty concerning though. At this stage it is all about getting systems and styles of play into place for the new season. On that basis we are looking not in good shape.

Until they are given the oppertunity to play they are never going to break through. Pre Season was a prime example, Josh played the first 2 games, looked really good in the midfield 2, composed and good movement, set up Lukaku well. Then we never saw him again for the rest of pre season.

I have to say there are some worrying signs from pre season, results mean nothing. But our play has been poor, passing has been generally slow and mis placed. We have not had the ability to get up the pitch quickly and involve Hazard or Marin as we should, by the time the ball is getting to them we have a wall of opposition for them to get through and it becomes so congested and tight that we can't work scoring chances. Basically it is old problems that we have not been able to get over. I hope things improve, but i have to say there are some not very good signs coming out of the pre season.

Based on what i have seen in pre season we are going to make things hard for us playing 4-2-3-1 with Mikel and Lamps as the 2 in midfield. It just isn't working and making things so hard for us get quick attacking moving up the park. I don't think we HAVE to change formation but i would be interested to see a personnel change and have Romeu and Ramires as the midfield 2, much more dynamic and quicker on ball, with a fluid 3 behind Torres of Mata, Hazard and Oscar it would be a really dynamic team. Ramires is much more effective in the middle of the park as is wasted out wide.

Another week comes to a close at the Chelsea academy and as always there has been plenty going on. It started last Saturday with a Friendly game for the U18’s against Bristol City which finished in a 4 – 0 win for the young blues. The goals were scored by Walter Figuera, George Cole and Jeremy Boga, who bagged a brace. The U18’s then hopped on a plane for Asia where they will play a couple of Friendly games before coming back to England and then up to Manchester United to play a few friendly games against some big clubs. Jumping over to America we saw some young players leave the first team tour after more senior players joining up. The players who returned home were Todd Kane, George Saville and Patrick Bamford. Bamford the only player to return disappointed having not managed to get on the pitch during the tour. The U21’s also had pre-season action this week whilst they were in Austria. A game against 1860 Munich saw a 3 – 2 defeat, Adam Nditi and Adam Coombes (formerly Phillip) with the goals for Chelsea. They have now returned to Cobham to continue their pre-season preparations. Demot Drummy was pleased with how the tour went, both on and off the pitch and feeling he has learned plenty about the players he will be working with for the coming season. Again this week we have seen Chelsea bolster their ranks not only in the first team but at U21 level. Talented new forward Eden Hazard has been joined by his younger brother Thorgan Hazard who is similar in playing style but not quite at the same standard. It was confirmed that he will initially join up with the U21’s but there is a possibility he may go on loan and I can only imagine it will be to a club in Europe. With no news yet of any league fixtures at academy level we have already had a small insight into what is to come. The exciting NextGen series has confirmed that they will reveal their fixture list for the coming season on Thursday 7th August. Obviously Chelsea already know who is in their group (Ajax, CSKA and Molde). There has been a number of clubs receiving their new academy status’s this week, Wolves, Sunderland, Stoke and Southampton among the clubs who have been granted Category 1 status, apparently only 12 clubs have been awarded category 1 status. There is still no clear outline as to how the leagues will be set up, but there is a possibility it will consist of 3 leagues with 23 teams. If this is the case it promises to provide the number of fixtures that these young players DO need. Coming up this week as well as the possible fixtures announcement for U18’s and U21’s will be 2 friendly games for the U18’s against the Tailand National U19’s and the Malaysia National U19’s, and the U21’s are playing a friendly game against Northampton Town. Click here to view the article

We surely need a right back and it would seem that Cesar is the man for us, i would expect this to go through after the olympics.

Fits the profile of the type of player we are looking for. Talented, quick and excellent vision. It really is good to see us bring them in at a younger age and let them develop with us. But lets see, we are linked with a LOT of players at the moment.

Surely more down to the fact that Belgium have a lot of quality youngsters coming through, Spain are the best national team in the world at the moment and brazil constantly produce top talent, stands to reason we would be interested in players from those areas. I doubt dressing room harmony is considered when looking at potential signings. No idea as to the reasons behind the Thorgan Hazard signing, i doubt it has anything to do with company for Eden as has a family of his own and a number of players from his country already at the club. At academy level we have seen us sign family members as sweetners for some top top talent (see the musonda and Angban brothers) this is also at a time when we are looking to build up the numbers in the squads available at that age too..

I think in all honesty De Bruyne will go out on loan for the season. I know Bremen are interested and we seem far more keen to send our players out of England for their loans but it would be far better for his development if we can get him to play regular for a premier league team...

I think that Hulk is still going to come, to have a player who can play out wide and can also play as a striker is what we need, especially if we are as i would expect now to send Lukaku out on loan. Torres is going to be the main man for pretty much all of the season (fitness permitting), so if we are going for a big name player then they need to be able to play other positions. Signing a young striker would be pointless as we would be just as well to keep Lukaku and have Torres, Sturridge and Lukaku as our striker options.

Always a hard one as a number 2 in all likelyhood is going to get very little game time. Personally i would be in favour of promoting either Jamal Blackman or Sam Walker over Hilario and Turnbull, both obviously younger but ability-wise are no different with the potential to be much better.

The results in pre season mean nothing. What has been most dissapointing for me is the lack on direction in our play. We have signed some quality wide and attacking players and we have failed to adapt our style of play at all yet, this is what pre season is for as much as fitness. We continue to be so laborious in our play, by the time it gets to one of our attacking players the opposition have too many numbers behind the ball for us to be really effective. So far we are looking in every game as if we are playing Barca or Bayern - get behind the ball and cautious play, not overcommiting. We really need to step things up if we are to be ready for the start of the season.

As far as i know we are not participating in the Milk cup and didn't last year either....